Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion

Dynarski, Susan; Hyman, Joshua; Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, v32 n4 p692-717 Aut 2013

This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We used the random assignment in Project STAR (the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment) to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on existing work in this area with unusually detailed data on college enrollment spells and the previously unexplored outcome of college degree completion. We found that assignment to a small class increases students' probability of attending college by 2.7 percentage points, with effects more than twice as large among black students. Among students enrolled in the poorest third of schools, the effect is 7.3 percentage points. Smaller classes increased the likelihood of earning a college degree by 1.6 percentage points and shifted students toward high-earning fields such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), business, and economics. We found that test-score effects at the time of the experiment were an excellent predictor of long-term improvements in postsecondary outcomes.